


in absentia

by perennials



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: M/M, a colossal mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 20:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are miles and miles and miles apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in absentia

**Author's Note:**

> ohkay so listen i almost died writing that fluff mess from gon's pov so i had to- had to, not wanted to, it was a had to- make the next piece an angst storm from killua's pov you feel me

Life without Gon is like sun without shine, like a song without tune, like breathing without lungs— this is what Killua realizes.

 

He has gotten so used to sizzling clear-skied afternoons that even cloudy days feel like winter nights. Killua is walking in a perennial blizzard, hoar frost sprouting like flowers around the gravestone of his heart. Fissured tenebrosity claws at his sides, raking uneven nails down cold, cold skin, and he feels

 

—nothing, really.

 

The evening breeze soughs in his ears. _Maybe you are a nothing without him_ , it sings, and he agrees, thinks that maybe Killua without Gon is like the moon without the sun, because without the sun's light the moon wanes into old habits, lapses back into a blanket of darkness so complete in its totality that it can never be found again. Killua is a penumbra of whispered good-nights (good-byes), starved for UV rays and burned inside-out; mirrored reflections, nothing more, nothing less.

 

Where is the sun? Where is his sun? Where is Gon? He is cold like a freeze-dried animal carcass. The sleek curve of the beetle-phone is a familiar weight in his hands, the string of numbers unforgotten even after months spent gathering dust in the dirt trenches of his mind. Killua scrolls through his messages until he sees the last one Gon sent.

 

_Call me if anything happens, okay?_

 

Briefly he wonders if this counts as _something happening_ — if so much nothing can happen that something arises out of it, a conflict from absence, an ache from empty space. Before the thought can manifest into something larger he staunchly reminds himself that it doesn't.

 

 _Traitor_ , the ghost in the mirror crows. Killua lets the phone fall away from his hands.

 

-

 

When he wakes up there is a different shade of warmth by his side and a different kind of pressure on his arm and a different kind of tightness in his chest. Killua turns his head to the side, to Alluka, and the smile that rises unwittingly to his lips spells out love in four letters and relief in six more. She is kind and innocent and untouched (unlike him, with crayon-red under his nails and shadowed eyes, unlike Gon, with bitter dreams and expectations fallen short, unlike them), and in seven-thirty a.m. and softer silhouettes he dares to hope that she will learn to see the world through stained-glass windows.

 

Killua makes a vow to the plasticity of the sunlight percolating through the faded curtains right there and then, to protect (salvage) what he can, to do things over better this time.

 

Afterwards, he wonders if he will have to give something up in exchange, or if he’s already lost it.

 

-

 

Killua sees traces of Gon all around him, in places he's been, in places he's never been, in places he could have been.

 

He's long since returned to Whale Island, the boy with the million-dollar white-gold smile, and yet Gon is here still in the light bouncing off the open windowpanes, in the cascade of luminescent green down the sides of the hotel building, in the spaces between his fingertips where Alluka's fit too loosely. The flashes of sharp, spiky hair on streets that leaf-green boots have never traversed are barmecide; the ghost of an ache in his bones is not. Killua knows this like he knows exactly how much poison is required to incapacitate a full-grown man— instinctively, guiltily.

 

From time to time something will appear that reminds him so much of Gon he is stricken with the urge to ~~run away~~  chase it down; bubbling laughter rising into the cool atmosphere, as clear as the clinking of wine glasses, ringing incessantly in his ears. Killua almost buys a fishing rod from a street vendor the next day— the purchase doesn't go through thanks to Alluka's quick thinking, but the concern she has for him lingers on long after they've wandered down into the next street. Alluka questions his reasoning quietly, though truth be told Killua doubts himself even more.

 

For the first few months after, Alluka is the only thing that keeps Killua from drifting out into outer space. At the same time she is the only thing that keeps Killua from thinking, and though her firefly-glow smile is a welcome diversion from the sunrises that cast shadows all over his dreams, they almost seem to overpower everything else, and as Gon evanesces Alluka slowly comes into sharper focus.

 

 _This is fine_ , he tells himself, when Alluka yanks on his shirtsleeve and drags him away from a silver-etched silhouette he swears he's seen before somewhere. There's a lady garbed in elaborate silk offering to tell fortunes for a thousand jenny each, and Alluka wants in.

 

The lady warns Alluka, look out for specters.

 

Killua smiles distractedly and declines to have his fortune told, writing it off as not wanting to spend too much on unnecessary things despite the weighted pockets he shoves his hands further into. He hands her the money with a hundred jenny extra (on Alluka's insistence).

 

As Alluka links her arm with his and eagerly leads him over to the next eye-catch, Killua absentmindedly watches the familiar silhouette disappear out of the corner of his eye. _This is fine_ , he thinks.

 

"What do you think Miss Fortune Teller was talking about when she mentioned specters?" Alluka brings up later out of the cloudy blue. The roads on the outskirts of town are gentler, less invasive, and in the alpenglow of seven in the evening everything is tinted as red as sparkling wine. They are returning to their hotel room after a long day of kaleidoscopic experiences, Alluka's shoes scuffing the dirt road, Killua's footfalls as deathly silent as always.

 

Specters remind Killua of boys with fiery eyes and hearts that burn, but he doesn't tell her that. Specters remind him of himself, too, but he doesn't tell her that, either. Instead:

 

"Maybe she means you're being haunted by ghosts," he muses, half-serious, half-joking.

 

"Noooo," Alluka wails in mock-horror, hands flying up to her face.

 

“They’re going to eat you!” Killua runs at Alluka and tickles her sides until she’s snorting and giggling and gasping for breath.

 

They spend the rest of the walk back chasing each other's shadows, their laughter echoing through the empty streets.

 

The sun has a doppelgänger in every town they pass through, but Killua’s eyes are blindfolded.

 

-

 

Everything with Gon is a series of firsts. First friend, first _best_ friend, first journey, first time living, first hello, first good-bye.

 

First landslide in his thoughts, first apology, first _we'll meet again._

 

The first time Gon tells Killua "it has to be you" his breath hitches completely in his throat, traffic congestion playing down the paved roads of his chest.

 

The first time Killua looks at Gon and has to squint through the glare is also the day he realizes love comes in flavors other than extra-large, extra-menacing, emotionally-dead older brother.

 

If Killua had known how to trap stars in a jar before then Gon is the guiding hand on his that teaches him how to coax them into his palm. And maybe Gon has taught him how to speak to asterisms, but alone his voice cannot reach the heavens, alone he is heavy eyes and callous whims, alone he is empty reflections and monochromity.

 

In the blink of an eye the blindfold comes apart, scattering into tiny particles that catch the light and glint angry-red, and there it is, again.

 

The ghost on Killua's shoulder.

 

-

 

Killua thinks he’s over it.

 

“I think I’m over it,” he announces, as he rummages around in the drawer. “I think I really am.”

 

Alluka doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s set out three bowls and three plates.

 

Instead, she twists her mouth into a moue and says, “I’m so hungry I could probably eat a whole cow.” Jumping out of the blanket fort she's meticulously constructed on the bed, she grabs his hand and tugs him insistently towards the door.

 

“C’mon, let’s go out and find something instead. I'm _starving._ "

 

-

 

He takes the strange, lilting way Gon says his name and puts it in a song, plays it on loop until he forgets the lyrics and the notes unwind around themselves and the letters fade away into the backdrop of eight a.m. static.

 

 _You still miss him,_ the specter on his back crows.

 

Killua regards the flickering screen of his beetle-phone dully. “Shut up,” he mouths, lips curling around the words.

 

_Don’t deny it._

 

The phone hits the ground hard; the screen shatters with nary a protest.

 

_Liar._

 

 _Liar,_ he agrees.

 

_Liar._

**Author's Note:**

> today on overused fic tropes and repetitive imagery--  
> i hope you had a time reading this cos i had a time writing it until three a.m. in the morning and the world actually really literally started spinning right before my eyes.  
> kudos, comments, and you reader-guy are cool, but comments are like the coolest of them all.
> 
> have a good one


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